Photographing the Klan in the 1980s

I didn't know to be afraid. And I didn't realize that they were.

One of the Ku Klux Klan marches I photographed in the 1980s. (For more photos, scroll through the slideshow.)

One of the Ku Klux Klan marches I photographed in the 1980s. (For more photos, scroll through the slideshow.)

Photo: Mark Lacy

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A KKK march on lower Westheimer Road. The "Tootsie" sign refers to Kathy Whitmire, the mayor of Houston at the time.

A KKK march on lower Westheimer Road. The "Tootsie" sign refers to Kathy Whitmire, the mayor of Houston at the time.

Photo: Mark Lacy

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A KKK march at Houston City Hall.

A KKK march at Houston City Hall.

Photo: Mark Lacy

Photographing the Klan in the 1980s

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When I was in high school, in a small town in Oklahoma, one of my football teammates, a friend, was hanged. He was African-American, and most everyone I knew suspected that the local Ku Klux Klan had committed the crime. But they also believed the KKK would never be brought to face charges.

In Texas, in the 1980s, I volunteered as a surveillance photographer for organizations that protested the KKK. This was exciting work that I believed needed to be done.

At first I wasn't experienced enough to comprehend the dynamics of the many groups that are present at the pro- and anti-Klan demonstrations. And I didn't completely understand the purpose of documenting and identifying the seemingly benign, anonymous observers and informants in the crowds.

I also didn't realize it was dangerous work. At first, I walked pretty freely around the Klan rallies and gatherings in Houston, Austin, San Antonio, Beaumont and other Texas cities. I learned about different factions within their organization and their attitudes about similar groups, like their periodic cohorts, the American Nazi Party.

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In several tense situations — in Channel View, Hico and College Station — I feared for my life. In Pasadena, a woman raised a gun at me for taking pictures in a KKK bookstore. And then there were some even more frightening incidents that happened as I discovered the serious nature of the espionage that goes on between various radical groups and authorities. For more than twenty years, I declined to have the telephone directory list my address.

But the situations weren't always tense. In Pasadena and Clear Lake, I talked with Klan members about their daily co-existence with African-American and Vietnamese people. I found interesting parallels in what they were telling me about their economic conditions and the concerns I heard and witnessed in Houston's Third and Fourth Wards, primarily African-American communities where relentless fear-mongering and alarm over the "Asian invasion" had proliferated on local talk radio. At times, it seemed that many Klan members were as marginalized and afraid as those inner-city populations.